AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v ATHLETICS

September 30, 2002

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: I don't know, I have never been here before so we will just have to wait and see. Honestly, we are just coming here to play. We have done it all year long. We got to spring training, that was an accomplishment, after our winter, so we said all year long we are going to go out and try to win the series, and that's what we have tried to do, so getting to the playoffs here, this is very exciting for our team. Sure, we don't have any experience, I am a rookie manager, I have got a rookie bench coach, rookie pitching coach, we can just keep going on and on, but I don't think our players really understand those things, they are just going to go out there and play like they have all year long. We are going to have a good time, that's what you are supposed to do here, enjoy the team. If we pitch and catch the ball, we have a chance.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, we got to spring training, and we talked about it in a meeting from the get-go, and those are things we couldn't control. We talked about only being able to control the things out on the baseball field, so you leave those things alone. When we got on the field we were just playing baseball. Sure it was in the back of our minds, sure it was a motivating factor to a lot of guys. I have got a T-shirt in my locker that some guy made up, and you know what it says, you can do this to it or whatever. And it was in their minds, and if we use that as a motivating factor, that's fine, but more than anything else, our baseball team was in a pennant race last year, we wanted to get back to it, and I think that was all the motivation we needed.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, setting up the rotation, I didn't feel that you could go wrong with any of our pitchers there. I could have even put Lohse in because I thought he pitched fantastic all year, but I thought with Radke starting off, the kid has been here a long time, and if you have ever seen Brad Radke on game day, when he is focused, I think he is as good as anybody in the league, and the way he throws the ball, and the way we catches the ball, that's a pretty good combination. So putting Radke out there, Mays coming in behind him, he has been throwing fantastic, he has been throwing the sinker, we know a couple years ago he was an All Star, last year he was an All Star, getting back to that form, that's a pretty good feeling to have, too. Rick Reed has been fantastic the second half. I think the big game at home Friday is going to be huge, and Reed will be perfect for it. Our biggest question was Milton, whether he was going to be healthy. He threw Sunday, had a little flare-up on the knee. We know when Milton is on, he can stop a baseball team pretty good. It wasn't cut and dry, I had some options, and I thought our pitching coach, my coaches, and I think our players like it with Radke being out there. He's a pretty important person around our clubhouse, and he is game on, and that's what we like.

RON GARDENHIRE: I don't know if you can go wrong with that rotation, honestly. I have never tried to manage for anybody else and I won't start now. I think Artie is in a pretty good situation when you can run those three young men out there, and I would take my chances with any of them, also, just like he is doing. And Mr. Hudson is a qualified number 1 starting in a playoff, so I think a lot of teams would love to have that man, and the other two guys right behind, so I wouldn't second-guess Artie. The game is going to be played on the field tomorrow, and after it's all said and done, I am sure you can fire those questions out there pretty easy.

RON GARDENHIRE: That's dot-com. I normally answer him right away. Yeah, Michael Cuddyer is going to start right field. He is the hot hand. He came in spring training, had a great spring. We sent him out thinking he needed some at bats, he needed to play right field, he came up towards the end, struggled a little bit, but he has been very hot, hitting the ball very, very well. He is the kind of kid that can drive the ball out in the ball field, and like I said, swinging the bat very well, and I am very confident with him.

RON GARDENHIRE: That was the start to this organization. Brad Radke wanted to stay around here, we signed him to a nice contract. That was a good start for our organization. We have done that with a couple of pitchers. We all know in the game you have to have pitching to win baseball games, and Radke was a good start for us. We signed Miltie and Mays, and we got Reeder there, so that's where it all starts. But Radke was the start of the whole situation. We gave him a good contract, wanted to be a Minnesota Twin, loves the area, and that's very important for a lot of our players.

RON GARDENHIRE: No, not really. And I know you saw that, and I know you are throwing it out there, too, Patrick. He definitely got beat up. What happened here is he came back, Scotty Ulger, our hitting instructor, talked to him about shortening his swing, shortening up the high leg kick, and he has done all those things recently, and it's really working out for him, he started staying in the zone a lot better, swinging at better pitches, and he is getting more hits, and he feels very confident, very, excited. I know it's a tough situation to go into the playoffs here in Oakland, but I think the kid has been in a lot of tough situations and we are very excited for him.

RON GARDENHIRE: Is that kind of like cutting my own throat if I say he is doing real good? He has done fantastic. What a year, 20 games in a row he put together. After a slow start, the team got on a roll, and I am sure with that kind of pitching can make you look good as a manager. That's the way I feel here. But he has done a fantastic job with that team. He lost some very key players, Johnnie Damon [ph], he lost some pretty good players. Give credit to him, Billy Bean [ph] did a great job. He has done very well, a great baseball teamer.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, no, Joe-Joe is normally somewhere around 91, 88. He changes speeds with his fastball. More so what we want to do is see him do is use that fastball, he has got a great sinker, he can use them in and out, and as he talks all the time, he says all the time, he's amazed how Reed can pitch with his fastball. Joe Mays can do that, also, and when he is out on the mound and he is pitching with his fastball, he is very good, so hopefully, that's what he will step out there and do Wednesday, use his fastball in and out, because he is very good when he does that, but we don't worry about the velocity very much.

RON GARDENHIRE: I answered that. We took Bob Wells off the roster. We ended up with 14 players and 11 pitchers. The uncertainty with Milton with his knee, I was concerned about that. I thought Kyle Lohse -- originally we probably thought about going with 10 pitchers but ended up with 11 because I thought Kyle Lohse deserved a shot here. We had problems with our starters. Bob Wells, just a situation where somebody had to go. Bobby is a very good friend of mine, I sat in the back of that airplane for a long time as a coach here with Bob Wells. I respect him greatly. That was a very hard decision for me. We have got three righties and three lefties out there that I feel very comfortable with, and Lohse is the long guy and so it was just one of those situations where I felt Mike Jackson was going to be better getting a guy out in the middle of an inning if we needed to, so that's what I based my decision on.